This website uses cookies to deliver some of our products and services as well as for analytics and to provide you a more personalized experience. Click here to learn more. By continuing to use this site, you agree to our use of cookies. We've also updated our Privacy Notice. Click here to see what's new.

This website uses cookies to deliver some of our products and services as well as for analytics and to provide you a more personalized experience. Click here to learn more. By continuing to use this site, you agree to our use of cookies. We've also updated our Privacy Notice. Click here to see what's new.

About Optics & Photonics TopicsOSA Publishing developed the Optics and Photonics Topics to help organize its diverse content more accurately by topic area. This topic browser contains over 2400 terms and is organized in a three-level hierarchy. Read more.

Topics can be refined further in the search results. The Topic facet will reveal the high-level topics associated with the articles returned in the search results.

Abstract

We present measurements of relative intensity noise versus various levels of optical feedback for 1.3 μm quantum dot lasers epitaxially grown on silicon for the first time. A systematic comparison is made with heterogeneously integrated 1.55 μm quantum well lasers on silicon. Our results indicate up to 20 dB reduced sensitivity of the quantum dot lasers on silicon compared to the quantum wells.

Fig. 4 Lasing spectra at 20°C from a heterogeneously integrated quantum well laser on silicon (left - biased at 48 mA) and a quantum dot laser on silicon (right - biased at 57 mA) used in this study. Multiple longitudinal Fabry-Perot modes are visible in each case.

Fig. 5 Laser RIN at 100 MHz with thermal and shot noise subtracted out versus various levels of optical feedback for two different heterogeneously integrated quantum well lasers (left) and two different quantum dot lasers on silicon (right). The legend indicates the bias current applied to the laser as well as the optical power received at the spectrometer. While the quantum well lasers sometimes exhibit increases in RIN up to 30 dB over the range of feedback values, the variation in RIN for the quantum dot lasers is limited to within 10 dB the measured bias currents.

Fig. 6 Total system RIN from 100 MHz to 10 GHz, for quantum well and quantum dot lasers biased at 1.5×Ith. The feedback induces strongly enhanced RIN peaks in the noise spectra of the quantum well laser, with the peak around 2 GHz presumably related to the relaxation oscillation frequency. Similar features are not visible in the case of the quantum dot lasers.

Fig. 7 Measured low frequency system RIN at weak and strong feedback levels at 2×Ith. Enhanced RIN peaks are visible under strong feedback for both types of lasers at frequencies separated by the external cavity roundtrip frequency. However the increase under strong feedback is much less for the quantum dot laser.